Animals, Robots, Gods: Adventures in the Moral Imagination

A mind-expanding exploration of the ethical bonds we share with the nonhuman

Moral relationships saturate the living world, and the line between the human and nonhuman is blurrier than we might think. Animals, Robots, Gods provides a bold new vision of ethics defined less by the individual mind or society and more by our interactions with those around us, whether they are the pets we keep, the gods we believe in, or the machines we endow with life.

Drawing on pioneering fieldwork around the globe by some of today’s leading researchers, acclaimed anthropologist Webb Keane invites us to expand our moral imagination. We learn about the ethical dilemmas of South Asian animal rights activists, Balinese cockfighters, cowboys, and Japanese robot fanciers. We meet a hunter in the Yukon who explains to a bear why it must come out of hibernation and generously give itself up to him, a cancer sufferer in Thailand who sees his tumor as a reincarnated ox, and a computer that persuades users to confess their anxieties as if they were patients on a psychiatrist’s couch. Through these and other stories, Keane challenges us to rethink our most basic ideas about who--and what--we deem worthy of moral consideration.

Brimming with charm, wit, and insight, Animals, Robots, Gods reveals how centuries of conversations between us and nonhumans inform our conceptions of morality and will continue to guide us in the age of AI and beyond.

Webb Keane is the George Herbert Mead Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan. His books include Ethical Life: Its Natural and Social Histories (Princeton) and Christian Moderns: Freedom and Fetish in the Mission Encounter. His work has been featured in leading publications such as the Los Angeles Times, Esquire, USA Today, and the Financial Times.